I couldn't find much use of the videos selected for historical background so I consulted outside sources listed at the end.
Native American theatre has its origins in pre-European times. While not plays in the traditional euro-centric sense that we think of the today, they preformed many theatrical acts as a tribe to tell and oral history and pass along knowledge. With the arrival of Europeans in the 1600s there was an extermination of Native American, intentional and non intentional that deeply affect the population sizes in the country. Beginning in the 1880's the government sponsored American Indian boarding schools which served as a guise of better relations, but were in fact use to "civilize" Natives by taking them from their families and forcing them to learn English. Highway attend a modern version of one of these schools, showing the reach and longevity of the American government in Native Affairs. The boarding program introduced Native to the European theatre and from there new play emerged. In white American produced plays, the Native American were treated as savages that needed to be tamed and hardly even use actual Native peoples. Natives use theatre to extend their voice about the oppressions they faced as a colonized group and as a political means as well. After the wave of political movement in 1960s, the Native American Theater movement was established and it opened up a space for Native plays to be heard. in 1976 the one of first theatre group dedicated to producing plays by Native people rose called, Spiderwoman Theater, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, and after that more companies came on to the scene.
Native American theatre has its origins in pre-European times. While not plays in the traditional euro-centric sense that we think of the today, they preformed many theatrical acts as a tribe to tell and oral history and pass along knowledge. With the arrival of Europeans in the 1600s there was an extermination of Native American, intentional and non intentional that deeply affect the population sizes in the country. Beginning in the 1880's the government sponsored American Indian boarding schools which served as a guise of better relations, but were in fact use to "civilize" Natives by taking them from their families and forcing them to learn English. Highway attend a modern version of one of these schools, showing the reach and longevity of the American government in Native Affairs. The boarding program introduced Native to the European theatre and from there new play emerged. In white American produced plays, the Native American were treated as savages that needed to be tamed and hardly even use actual Native peoples. Natives use theatre to extend their voice about the oppressions they faced as a colonized group and as a political means as well. After the wave of political movement in 1960s, the Native American Theater movement was established and it opened up a space for Native plays to be heard. in 1976 the one of first theatre group dedicated to producing plays by Native people rose called, Spiderwoman Theater, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, and after that more companies came on to the scene.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050829051045/http://sacbee.com/static/archive/news/projects/native/day2_main.html
http://howlround.com/the-current-state-of-native-theatre
http://www.nativepeoples.com/Native-Peoples/May-June-2006/The-Art-of-Translation-Native-American-Theatre-in-the-Global-Community/
http://www.playbill.com/article/longest-running-native-american-theatre-company-to-celebrate-40th-anniversary
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2004/thunderbird-theatre-to-dramatize-american-indian-creation-stories/
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805215/19809/excerpt/9780521519809_excerpt.pdf